A CAMPAIGN FOR HAPPINESS

Sometimes, it’s the simplest gestures that make you smile.

This is the inspiration behind the Brighter Day Project, a campaign for happiness that has recently popped up in Connecticut. The premise is simple: to give people a brief moment of levity through signs placed in their everyday world. There’s nothing cutting edge about the signs – no RFID or geotargeting or expensive media buys. They are just random and fun, giving random, local passersby a reason to smile on their way to or from wherever it is they’re going.

The potential of the project, however, is not nearly as limited as its scaled execution might suggest. Through social media outlets (which they’ve begun to use in earnest), the message of the Brighter Day Project could very easily extend beyond their physical locations. As such, these simple, local community signs have the power to spawn a mass movement – the same experience of stumbling into the sign can occur as easily online as it can for a passerby in the neighborhood where they are posted (for example: they drew my smile all the way from California, when I found them on NotCot).

Whether they will or won’t is for us to watch and see, but it’s the type of minimilast – but clever – gesture that can move a community of followers, both off line and on.